


Ode to the Dying Railways

by transmarkwatney (felilivargas)



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Cowboy themes, Gen, Lightning flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felilivargas/pseuds/transmarkwatney
Summary: If there's two things I love, it's exploring the lore of the Lightning flight and filk music. I wrote this ficlet late at night and published it in the Lightning flight forums, and got some positive feedback, so... here it is.





	Ode to the Dying Railways

It's a Saturday night out in the middle of the Highland Scrub where the little old boomtown sits. It's nearing closing time at the local saloon. Well, it's been past closing time for a couple of hours now, but the storms outside have been too bad to let anyone out loose. The volatile skies have grounded the few travelers, and the locals have little else to do on a rainy evening, so the dining room is a little cramped. Drinks are still being passed around, but for the most part, the night and its atmosphere have started to come to a close.

In the back of the saloon, a few dragons are gathered around a guitarist, and old chiseled Fae. His spindly fingers look as if they'll break apart at any moment, but they strum with a youthful ferocity one wonders how he could retain. His eyes, though old and sunken, still shine alight with the electric blue of a patriotic Lightning-hatched sparkling. A couple of other voices harmonize with him, their voices hovering, faded but still alive, through the calming of the storm, an old patriotic song sung by sparks of years past and years to come.

_The prudent textbooks giveth, in tables at the end_  
The stress that shears a rivet, what makes a tie-bar bend,  
What traffic wrecks macadam, what concrete should endure;  
Yet we poor sons of Adam have no such literature  
to warn us or make sure! 

Around the room, you begin to notice the subtle traces of history hidden in the saloon, like bookmarks left on the building in a forgotten era. The marble tabletops, long stained and charred from decades of use; the once-intricate finishing of the walls near the ceiling, now in a bad need of dusting... The town, you recall a local telling you, used to be one of the wealthier boomtowns that sprung up along the railroad. Some were wealthy businessdrakes from the Fire regions out west who set up home here, falling in love with the stormy skies of Lightning and never wanting to leave. Others had been sparks as many generations back as dragonkind had existed who wanted to settle down with their families after years of working the rails. As the railroad became publicized, the boomtowns became important pit-stops for tourists. The saloon could give meals and a bed to the weary travelers who were tired of sleeping on the train. The economy flourished, but only for the time being.

With the turn of the century and the invention of powered aircraft, many dragons began to opt for air travel over trains. The aeroplanes just had more advantages than train travel; unless you were staying in the Expanse, it was just more reliable to travel by air, because most of the flights hadn't put much effort into building a decent railroad (Fire being a notable exception). Advances in technology quickly made airplanes more resistant to lightning strikes, and soon the Stormcatcher made jobs for trained mages to redirect lightning from air traffic as a public safety measure. Of course, cargo was still more reliably delivered by rail, but trucks soon began to replace them, too. The golden age of the Stormseeker railways had simply come to a close.

_We only of Creation_  
(How much luckier the bridge and rail!)  
Abide the twin damnation—  
To fail and know we fail.  
Yet we - by which sole token  
We know we once were Gods—  
Take shame in being broken  
However great the odds—  
The burden of the Odds. 

You find yourself struck by the subtle patriotism of the townspeople, the rural dragons who fought to keep the railway and the towns that spotted it alive. Many outsiders seemed to view the Shifting Expanse as if the entire region was the Stormcatcher's lair, meticulously designed and calculated to the nth degree to assure maximum output from all workers. And while that's definitely what He would want you to believe, the land and the people both, in their own ways, say otherwise. The arid dunes of the Highland Scrub may be far from the Spire, but here, in the middle of nowhere, you find the heart of Lightning's culture and identity. After all, the most Lightning undertaking of all is fighting to keep yourself and your way of life alive. Maybe hanging onto the past was just another way of finding, against all odds, a way to survive.

_Oh, veiled and secret Power_  
Whose paths we seek in vain,  
Be with us in our hour  
Of overthrow and pain;  
That we - by which sure token  
We know Thy ways are true—  
In spite of being broken,  
Because of being broken  
May rise and build anew  
Stand up and build anew. 

**Author's Note:**

> Song is Hymn to Breaking Strain by Julia Ecklar & Leslie Fish


End file.
